bcspace wrote:It is legitimate to be financially opaque in order to head off fraudulent or undeserving lawsuits.
It's already common knowledge that the church is rolling in dough. So that can't be the reason.
bcspace wrote:It's a big part of it. One never knows what a judge will or will not consider open to such raids.
It's completely irrelevant to it, both historically (the impetus for the Church closing the books) and as a practical reality in law (the Church gets sued anyway, and there is no privilege that exists precluding discovery of the Church's finances).
But since you characterize it as "raids," I will conclude that you agree that the bishop in Washington was right to tell the Cavalieri sisters not to tell anyone that they were being sexually abused because of the problems such a disclosure would cause.